


Evaluation

by Jadesfire2808 (Jadesfire)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire2808
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruises fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evaluation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Gen Battle](http://fox1013.livejournal.com/1606070.html) prompt: Emily and Hotch, rules. Extract posted there. This is the full thing. Episode tag to Minimal Loss

_I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage._  
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Hotch hadn't been looking for Prentiss. He'd been looking for the files from the Silver Spring stalking case, which had somehow been mislaid in the scramble to get everything finished for Brian Matloff's trial, then superseded by the New York shootings. It wasn't until the team was back from Colorado that he realized it was still outstanding and that at this rate, the case was never going to be officially closed.

Instead of the files he needed, he found Prentiss in the conference room, her own paperwork spread out over the table. She was sitting half-turned away from the door, and Hotch hesitated, watching her for a moment. Her knuckles were still scraped and with her hair pulled back, he could see the bruising on her neck and jawline. Cyrus had done a thorough job on her, that was for sure. As Hotch watched, she put her coffee cup to her lips, hissing with pain as she did so.

He cleared his throat. "Should you even be here?"

Starting a little, Prentiss turned towards him. "I'm fine," she said, and he knew it was a reflexive response. His skepticism must have shown a little, because she added, "Really. The doctors cleared me completely. No concussion, I never lost consciousness, and the worst I'm having to deal with right now is a split lip that won't let me drink my coffee."

"You don't consider that serious?" Letting his expression soften a little, Hotch came into the room, leaning on the back of a chair as he looked down at her. "I still think you should take a few more days."

"Right. Like you did when you had that minor niggle of a perforated eardrum?" Raising an eyebrow, at him, Prentiss took a very careful sip of coffee and put her mug down among the sea of papers. "I'll be fine."

Since he couldn't exactly argue with that, Hotch nodded. "Okay then." The paperwork on the table was pretty much what he'd expected. There were diagrams and maps, lists of names and some photographs of Liberty Ranch, both before and after it was blown up. "Do you have much more to do here? I think JJ's got some new cases she wants us to look at and we're going to need the room."

"Of course. I'll finish up as quick as I can. Do you know how many forms you have to sign for not dying in the line of duty? Not to mention three psych evals for this." She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of her black eye and the scabbed-over cuts.

It was Hotch's turn to raise an eyebrow. "And you think it's healthy that you volunteered to take a beating during which you risked antagonizing your captor by telling him you could take it?"

"I wasn't telling him, I was telling you." Prentiss said, then closed her mouth, tilting her head a little. It was an expression Hotch recognized, so he was ready when she went on, "You ordered the evaluations, didn't you?"

"Standard procedure." Which was almost true. One was standard. Hotch hadn't liked what he'd heard in Prentiss's voice while Cyrus was throwing her around the store room, and he needed to be sure.

From the iciness in her voice, Prentiss didn't quite see it that way. "You think that because I'm a woman, I can't take it?"

Hotch carefully kept his body language neutral and his voice firm, trying to cut off the argument before it could start. "No, I think that anyone who deliberately allows themselves to be hurt, then thinks they can just shrug it off again might need more than just an hour of talking that through. Not to mention the fact that most BAU agents can run rings around the Bureau's psychologists. I like to give the other guys a chance sometimes, and by the third session they might actually have gotten used to you."

Apparently satisfied, Prentiss deflated a little, sitting back in her chair and giving him a rueful smile. "Yeah, I guess I would have done the same. Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"You should have seen how many appointments I made for Morgan after New York." Hotch glanced around the room, deliberately moving things on. "I was actually looking for the Silver Spring files. They seem to have been buried somewhere."

"I think Reid has them." Prentiss looked down at the pen in her hand, then up again, not quite meeting Hotch's eyes. "I didn't do it to protect Reid."

"Yes, you did," Hotch said, ignoring the way her eyes widened in surprise. He hadn't thought this needed to be said; it seemed he was wrong. "And you would have done it for me, or Morgan or Rossi, just the same."

At that, Prentiss unwound a little more, nodding as she stretched out her injured fingers. "Cyrus would never have trusted me. He saw women as his followers, not his equals. Reid stood a better chance of getting close to him."

"Probably true. And I'm not saying you made the wrong call. For what it's worth, I think you made the right one."

"The next sentence is going to start with 'but', isn't it?"

"But," and Hotch waited until Prentiss met his eyes before going on, "you don't have anything to prove here. Not to me and not to the team. If we'd made the decision to come in regardless of what you were telling us, that would have been because we judged that to be the right decision at the time, not because we thought you couldn't take it. You took a huge risk to tell us something we didn't need to know. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." Again, the response seemed automatic, so Hotch just held her gaze until the rest of the tension bled out of her expression and she nodded, just once. "Yes. I understand." She hesitated, then said, "Hotch, would you really have just listened to him beating me if I hadn't told you I could take it?"

The three seconds it took him to think were probably answer enough, judging by the knowing look on Prentiss' face, but perhaps this needed saying. "Possibly." His fingers tightened on the back of the chair, because he'd spent too much time in this job standing by helplessly while his people got hurt. And it was easy to tell himself that he was doing all he could while Reid begged for his life, or Morgan paced a jail cell or Elle self-destructed or Gideon-

He shook his head, letting some of the lingering tiredness from three days and ten years show through. "None of us wanted to just listen to that, and it wouldn't have been any different if it had been anyone else. And it doesn't mean you get to skip any of those evaluations."

Prentiss raised an eyebrow. "Or what? You'll suspend me?"

The corner of Hotch's mouth twitched and he made no attempt to stop it. "No. I'll tell Garcia that you've volunteered to help her catch up on her scanning project. I think she's only got about fifty years of hand-written notes to go through."

Prentiss smiled, then winced and put a hand to her mouth. "Ouch. Sneaky."

"I try." With a final nod, Hotch headed for the door, pausing as there was another gasp of pain, swiftly followed by the sound of a drink being spilled and a few choice curses. Smiling to himself, he headed down into the bullpen. He'd have Reid bring her up another coffee.


End file.
